“Gentlemen,” Griffin began, “I don’t think there is any need for me to introduce Lt. Col. Fortune, so we’ll get started right away. The colonel will outline the situation very briefly and afterwards you may ask any questions that occur to you.” There was a quiet murmur of assent and Fortune realised that four years of obscurity had made no difference at all to his reputation. The newsmen were impressed by him.
“The first thing I must stress,” Fortune said, ‘is that Nesster ship 1753 may not land in Iceland at all. There is, in fact, only a one-in-three chance of this happening. Preliminary computations based on reports from the Lunar radar bases indicate that the South Greenland and South Baffin Island Sectors are equally likely touchdown areas.
“The second point I want to bring out is that even if 1753 does select this sector, the chances of it putting down on top of a town or village are so small as to be negligible. I know you have all heard of towns being flattened, but it has only occurred in places like parts of Africa and Japan where the buildings were of a type which would not show up well on whatever radar system the Nessters use. A Nesster ship is huge and massive but, like any other space or aircraft, it needs a flat piece of ground on which to land. It will even avoid a properly constructed cowshed.” Fortune smiled momentarily and was answered by appreciative grins from the group.
“In any case, no matter where the ship lands, we’ll be waiting for it—and we have considerable experience in this type of work.” There were more appreciative grins and Fortune knew he was going over well, opening up in response to their admiration. Slob, misfit—and traitor.
“Why did you come to Iceland, Colonel Fortune?” The reporter from the Visir made no apology for deviating from the main subject of the conference.
“I guess I started to feel sorry for those Nessters.” There were outright laughs at that one and even Lt. Griffin smiled thinly. Fortune felt his shirt begin to stick to his shoulders with perspiration.
“The Captain Johnny series on television is said to be accurately based on your early exploits against the Nessters, Colonel. Was it really like that?”
“Well, for one thing, I don’t remember all those pretty girls.” This is just fine, Fortune thought. The ship up there has swung in closer, thousands of miles closer, and all I have done is turn into a quick-fire comedian. A five-year exposure to history was all it had taken to change him from a normal young engineering graduate to a fat sweating clown….
Looking back on it, he was not sure when he had begun to realise the truth about the Nessters. At first there had been no time to think. The big ships had begun to land at random points across the Earth and each one poured out several hundred black scaly nightmares whose bacteria-laden breath was usually enough to kill any nearby human who was not properly masked. The Nessters were unarmed—if the word could be applied to fifteen-foot-long armoured bulldozers—but they made formidable opponents, and many men became heroes. John Fortune, an infantry lieutenant doing a two-year stint with the UNO Independents, was one of the first to discover the techniques of killing Nessters. He was involved in several spectacular actions, he was photogenic, he had a romantic, buccaneering name. He was, within a matter of months, Captain Johnny—the man of the moment.
It was not until the techniques of killing became comparatively easy, comparatively safe, that he had begun to ask questions. Why did the Nesster ships land one at a time at scattered points? Why did the drive engines of each ship run wild soon after landing, forcing the Nessters to abandon their shelter regardless of how hostile conditions outside were? In fact, why was a race with the technological prowess of the Nessters making such a painful, pitiful mess of taking over an unprepared planet?
The answer, when he found it, hurt. Captain Johnny, Earth’s super-soldier, had made his name slaughtering unarmed families of immigrants.
Scientific intelligence teams had gradually uncovered the story. The big cylindrical ships displayed meteor erosion which indicated that they had been travelling for not less than six hundred years. They were fully automated—they had to be, because the generations of Nessters who had lived and died during the journey would have had no idea of how to handle them at landfall. The truth was that, in spite of being ugly, black and deadly, the Nessters were innocents walking blindly to the slaughter.
And the thing which destroyed Fortune was the discovery that the truth made no difference. The Nessters simply were … unacceptable.
“How does your wife like living in Iceland, colonel?”
“My wife likes it here very much,” Fortune said carefully, aware of a brief feather-flick of apprehension which felt strange because it had nothing to do with the Nessters. If the papers got to know about Christine there could be an explosion of publicity which could blast Fortune out of his cosy Iceland command.
He had engineered the appointment to Sector N186 because it was one of the least likely to draw Nesster landings. It was a place where he could throw another log on the fire, serve tea and close bright curtains across the windows to shut out the darkness. There had been nothing else for him to do, for Earth was not going to stop killing Nessters and the Nessters were not going to stop arriving. One ship had been landing every twenty-two hours for five years and still the caravan stretched right out beyond the Solar System, beyond the farthest reach of Earth’s deep space probes.
Estimates of how long the daily landings could continue varied considerably—the lowest figure was fifty years; the highest was in the region of twelve centuries. A few people on Earth were worried sick about the Nesster problem, but far more were putting their sons into the army. It was, as far as soldiers were concerned, a big, beautiful sellers’ market.
As the pressmen dispersed at the end of the conference Fortune opened the right-hand drawer of his desk. In it was a shallow cardboard box, presented to him every month by a confectionery company, containing several dozen chocolate soldiers wrapped in brilliant foil. Slanted across the chest of each in yellow-limned red letters was the name, Captain Johnny.
“I think it went very well, sir,” Griffin commented, returning from the adjutant’s office. “They haven’t forgotten about you.”
“Some people have good memories,” Fortune grunted ungraciously. Within the drawer, almost of its own accord, his hand moved along the top rank of chocolate soldiers, methodically snapping their necks,
At six o’clock Fortune rang his home and was answered by an unfamiliar male voice which stated the number of his phone in precise, neutrally accented English.
Suddenly Fortune felt very tired. “I want to speak to Mrs Fortune.”
“Just a moment, colonel,” the voice replied efficiently. There was a cotton-wool silence, like that caused by a hand blocking a telephone’s mouthpiece, then the sound of Christine laughing.
“Hello, darl,” she said. “What is it? I hope you aren’t going to be late for the party.”
“Purely as a matter of interest—who was that?”
“Don’t be silly, darl,” Christine said. “You remember Pavel very well. You’ve met him at lots of functions. He came early to help me with the preparations for the evening.” Fortune remembered. Pavel Efimov was a Ukrainian who ran the International Hostel which had been set up in Reykjavik for the benefit of UNO personnel associated with the Unit. His willingness to use a free afternoon helping with Christine’s party explained why she had been spending so much time at the Hostel over the last three months. Or was it the other way round?
“Ah, yes,” Fortune said. “I’ll be a little late this evening, Christine—I want to go over to Bill Geissler’s place for a while.”